but his face had shifted into those unreadable planes she remembered from Detroit. “I’m not. I know they wouldn’t send someone all the way from Washington just for that.”
“How’d you know I’m at headquarters?”
“Five years ago, you were some ‘management bimbo’ doing your field supervisory time. I haven’t been keeping track of the rate of promotion for women, but I would guess that’s long enough for you to be at least a unit chief.”
“Actually, I was just promoted to deputy assistant director.”
“Really,” he said. “You must be quite the agent because someone as brutally honest as you surely wouldn’t accept a promotion simply because you’re a woman.”
She stared back at him, slightly amused. “Listen, Steve, if you’re trying to convince me that you can be an SOB, I remember. You’ll also find I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
Vail laughed. “A deputy assistant director. And on a rooftop in Chicago. There must be a really big problem back at the puzzle palace?”
“There is something we’d like your help with.”
“Unless you’ve got some bricks that need to be laid, you’re in the wrong time zone, darlin’.”
She looked at the chimney and the tools scattered around it. “You have a master’s degree in Russian history from the University of Chicago. How did you wind up being a bricklayer?”
“Is there something wrong with being a bricklayer?” he asked, his tone half amused with the feigned indignation.
“It just seems like there would be easier ways to make a buck.”
“Fair enough. It goes something like this. First you have to get fired, and then if you wait long enough, you start getting hungry. The rest of it just kind of falls into place.”
“I would have thought that you’d have looked for something a little more…indoors.”
“My father taught me when I was a kid. It’s how I got through college. And if you’re going to snoop around my personnel file, please get it right. Soviet history. It’s an important distinction in case whatever brings you here depends on my ability to see into the future,” Vail said. “Thus…” He waved his hand to encompass the surroundings. “Actually, I kind of like the work. It’s real. There’s something permanent about it, at least in human years. Handfuls of clay being transformed into complicated structures. And then, of course, it was the only house that the wolf couldn’t blow down. Besides, there are too many bosses indoors.”
“So you’re never going to take a job that has a boss?”
“There’s always a boss. The trick is to never take a job you can’t walk away from. Especially when the bosses get to be insufferable, which I think is now a federal law.”
“Is that what you did with the FBI, walk away when you didn’t like the boss?”
“Seems like you’ve thought about it a lot more than I have.”
“I’ve come with an offer that you can walk away from whenever you want.”
He pulled the trowel out of the mortarboard and picked up a brick. “Then consider me walked away.”
“I wouldn’t be here unless we really needed your help.”
“One of the things my departure from the Bureau taught me was that the FBI will never really need any one person.”
“I’m impressed. You’ve maintained a grudge for five years. You rarely see that kind of endurance anymore.”
“Thanks, but the credit really should go to my father. World-class scorn was the sum total of my inheritance. Enough of it can get you through anything.” Vail started turning over the mortar on the board again.
“Do you want it in writing? The Federal Bureau of Investigation needs the particular skills of Steven Noah Vail.”
“You’ll find someone else.”
Kate stepped in front of him. “I know something about you that maybe you don’t even know.”
“Oh good, I was wondering when we’d get around to managerial insight. Will I need something to write with?”
“You have to do this.” Her tone was not pleading but accusatory.
He held up the brick between them. “I do this so I don’t have to do anything.”
Her eyes carefully searched his face. “My God, you don’t know, do you? You really don’t know why you do these things. Why you have no choice but to say yes to me.”
“In that case, no.”
“Stop being so Vail for a minute.”
“Why is ‘no’ such a difficult concept for women? You demand we understand it the first time, every time.”
“Do you know why you stopped that bank robbery?” Ignoring her, Vail spread a bed of mortar and pushed the brick into it. “Because no one else could,” she